- Wash Tubbs
" Wash Tubbs " was a
comic strip created byRoy Crane that ran fromApril 14 ,1924 to1988 .Initially titled "Washington Tubbs II", "Wash Tubbs" was originally a comedy, or “Bigfoot,” strip focused on the misadventures of the title character, a
jazz age bumbler who ran a store. However the strip’s creator, cartoonist Roy Crane, reinvented the strip after its 12th week to make it the first true action/adventure comic strip. On Sundays, "Wash Tubbs" appeared as a topper, or subsidiary strip, from 1927 to 1933 over J.R. Williams' "Out Our Way" Sunday strip.Wash was a girl-crazy zany, and his character never truly changed even as the strip changed around him. After a Polynesian treasure hunt in which Wash made and lost a fortune, a series of adventures followed in which Wash fell afoul of his arch-enemy, Bull Dawson, who was to reappear throughout the series. The short, bespectacled Wash was not a fighter, and Crane tried out a couple of scrappier sidekicks until
May 6 ,1929 , when he introduced Captain Easy, a tough, taciturn Southerner with a mysterious past. Easy gradually took over the strip and became its lead character, getting his own Sunday page, "Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune", in1933 . In1949 "Wash Tubbs" was officially renamed "Captain Easy". Wash continued to appear as a supporting character but became steadily less important during the 1940s.The Tubbs and Easy characters were owned by the "
Newspaper Enterprise Association " syndicate and creator Roy Crane abandoned the strips in1943 to begin "Buz Sawyer ", a strip he would own outright.After Crane’s departure, control of the strips passed to Crane’s assistant,
Les Turner , who had worked on "Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune" since1937 . With Tubbs an increasingly unimportant character, Turner officially renamed the daily and Sunday strips "Captain Easy" in1949 .Turner collaborated with a number of artists on the strip, including
Walt Scott andMel Graff . When Turner retired in1969 control of the strips passed to his assistant,Bill Crooks . After more than 60 years in publication, the series was discontinued in 1988.Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy were also featured in
Big Little Books during the 1930s, and in a short run of Dell comic books during the 1940s. The entire 1924-1943 run of Crane’s strip was reprinted in "Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy", an 18-volume series with biographical and historical commentary byBill Blackbeard . This series was published byNBM Publishing (Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine) on a quarterly schedule from 1987 to 1992.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.